1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for processing a spoken language of words corresponding to individual, transcribable character codes of complex configuration, and in particular, to methods and apparatus for transcribing a spoken language of substantially monosyllabic words, such as the Chinese language, and for translating such languages into other languages.
2. Description of Prior Art
A number of Oriental languages are characterized by a character code of quite complex configuration. Moreover, the words of such languages may not be transcribed by combining a relatively small number of character codes into words by various combinations thereof. Rather, there is a unique transcribable character code of complex configuration for each word. Even plural forms, verb conjugation forms and noun declension forms can be represented by different character codes.
A good example of such an oriental language is Chinese. With respect to the transcription of Chinese, it should be noted that there is an Old and New Chinese. Old Chinese was utilized in what is referred to as Mainland China before approximately 1950, and it used today in Hong Kong, Taiwan, R.O.C. and some Malayan countries. New Chinese has been developed in what has become the People's Republic of China and used there since approximately 1950. Old Chinese is written in a very complicated character style whereas New Chinese is written in a somewhat simpler style. In Chinese, there are approximately 2,700 characters which might be characterized as basic characters, in general use. On an English typewriter, only 26 keys are actually required in order to transcribe most English words. Additional keys are provided for numbers, punctuation and other symbols, and of course each letter key provides for upper and lower case transcription. Nevertheless, if it were possible to have a Chinese typewriter, it would need approximately 100 times the number of keys found on an English typewriter. One would expect to encounter great difficulties in transcribing such a language, and moreover, in translating documents originally printed in such a language. This is the case, as can be appreciated from the following description of a Chinese "typewriter", which has been used in China for the past 20 years.
A Chinese typewriter is provided with a roller, mounted on a carriage, as in a typical English typewriter. The carriage is mounted so that a "typist" can push and pull the carriage forward and backward over a large square board, on a table comprising a lattice forming a very large number of small boxes. Elongated metal bars of small cross-section are disposed in the boxes of the lattice. A Chinese character is engraved at one end of each of the metal bars. A hammer device is also provided which can slide along the length of the carriage to any position of a needed character. When typing, a typist first reads a character and then positions the lattice to make the desired character available. The carriage is advanced and the hammer device is adjusted directly over the correct metal bar. The type then fixes the metal bar to the hammer, inks the character and enables a hammer strike to type the character on the page. The character is then returned to its original lattice position and the procedure is repeated for all of the remaining characters. It must be remembered that even the basic number of Chinese words requires approximately 2,700 individual metal bars. Such a number of metal bars is greater than that in a 50.times.50 array. A typist must have a certain educational background as well as mechanical skill and experience. The efficiency of such a typewriter is extremely low even for proficient operators.
In view of the difficulties encountered with state of the art typewriters, one skilled in the art might be expected to utilize computer assistance in the processing and transcription of languages such as Chinese. Computer assisted transcription entails overcoming three principal problems. The first problem involves the conversion of the complex character code into machine-readable information. The second problem involves the compilation, correlation and shuffling of information to provide a useful output. Finally, the useful output must be of a nature which can then be easily utilized for transcription, translation or other processing as required. Although the ability of computers to deal with almost any problem is generally accepted, the transcription and translation of Oriental languages presents a number of specific difficulties, both glaring and subtle, which have thus far prevented development of a satisfactory method and apparatus for such processing. Even where certain aspects of such processing have been developed in Western languages, such as English, the problems presented by the complex character codes of the Oriental languages are such that "Western" approaches are not only unsatisfactory, but provide little useful guidance.
Language as written and spoken is represented in a variety of ways. Marks on paper are interpreted as standing for sounds as well as "meanings". Sounds, written characters, meanings and the like can be cataloged and represented by machine code, according to any scheme. The present invention seeks to provide a means and method of cataloging sounds and written symbols in corresponding machine files, preferably together with other sounds and symbols having similar meaning in another language. Using encoding of acoustic information, the complexity of a large number of written character symbols is handled efficiently by data processing. Given the fact that the same sound may correspond to multiple characters and to multiple meanings, the user resolves any choices of plural meanings, by indicating the one desired. In this manner, the user accomplishes so much of the speech to character to meaning correlation as cannot be done by machine. The machine accomplishes repetitive comparisons and data shuffling at high speed, as cannot be done by a person. The man and machine therefore combine capabilities to form the optimum speech to character transcriber and/or translator.
The various approaches which have been taken in connection with the different aspects of this problem are illustrated in the following listed references, each of which is a U.S. patent: U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,028,165--Weber-Bell; 1,329,896--Frome; 1,609,959--Prescott; 2,412,061--Quidas; 2,627,541--Miller; 2,643,286--Hurvitz; 2,672,512--Mathes; 2,777,901--Dostert; 2,926,217--Powell; 3,020,360--Gratian et al; 3,280,937--Faber, Jr. et al; 3,284,084--Cooper; 3,289,325--Shreck; 3,319,357--Shreck et al; 3,612,676--Ooba et al; 3,958,345--Contreras; 3,703,602--Tozo; 4,086,435 Graupe et al; 4,124,895--Takise et al; 4,158,236--Levy; 4,218,760--Levy; and, 4,245,405--Lien et al. Acoustic discriminators range from simple resonance devices such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,028,165, to sophisticated acoustic analyzers such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,672,512 and synthesizers as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,703,602. A number of dictionary devices are disclosed wherein means are provided to match written and/or acoustic information in one or more languages. These range from simple mechanical devices, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,329,896, to complex mechanical devices such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,020,360 and sophisticated digital devices such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,158,236 and 4,218,760. Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 4,051,606 discloses a self-learning apparatus for reading and writing the Japanese language. The device operates on the basis of monosyllabic kana-letters. The device is entirely syllabic and one or more syllables may be required to represent a word in Japanese. An acoustic discriminator, digitizer and memory are used to match an acoustic signal with a kana-letter to be typed. A user can compare his or her pronunciation to the "correct" pronunciation by noting whether the intended kana-letter is in fact printed by the machine.
In addition to patent references, articles in three periodicals may be noted. In the September, 1981 issue of the IEEE Spectrum is an article entitled Speech Recognition: Turning Theory to Practice, which discusses the extent to which advances in semi-conductor technology have facilitated electronic speech recognition. An article in the 1979 issue China Pictorial describes the method by which an engineer in Shanghai, China developed a method for encoding Chinese characters into a computer. His method consisted of dividing each character into four quadrants and assigning each quadrant a letter, in accordance with a coding scheme. This approach destroys the integrity, exactness, pronunciation and meaning of the character information and results in a veritable avalanche of difficulties as the vocabulary increases. It will also be apparent that such encoding of various parts of a character field relate to only a very small part of the overall problem of processing speech into written information. An article entitled Unraveling the Mysteries of Speech Recognition in the March/April 1971 issue of HIGH TECHNOLOGY is of general interest.
Finally, there is a project, begun some time prior to June, 1978, wherein a translation was undertaken, from Chinese to English of a physics journal entitled Physika Sinika, from the People's Republic of China. In the process, it was first necessary to manually transfer each character in the Chinese text into a machine-readable code, a digitizing process requiring a binary code for every character. The digital data was then entered into the computer, which utilizes a grammar program and a vocabulary file to produce an English translation. The manual encoding required an inordinantly large number of people. Moreover, inasmuch as a translation was the desired result, numerous unnecessary encoding and decoding steps were necessarily done.
Thus far, the utilization of acoustic discriminators and speech analyzers has been directed to, or has required what might be referred to as near perfect pronunciation in the appropriate language. Without "perfect" or "standard" pronunciation, only a very small vocabulary can be encoded and dependably identified. This severely limits the use to which the device can be put and severely limits the number of people who can take part in the processing. Moreover, where Oriental languages have been particularly involved, those skilled in the art, working at what has always been the state of the art, have heretofore relied solely on a manual encoding of transcribed characters.
This invention enables computer assisted processing of Oriental languages on the basis of spoken words, and involves a process which can be initialized or programmed for any number of persons. It is believed that this invention would be particularly effective and efficient in processing the Cantonese dialect of Chinese.